Women’s Freemasonry in the Age of Enlightenment

Stereotypes on the Right and the Left

Authors

  • Margaret C. Jacob University of California, Los Angeles

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.v4i1.11

Keywords:

Women, lodges of adoption, contemporary responses

Abstract

This paper examines the reactions that women in freemasonry have received from both the left and the right. Neither side seems to have a very clear understanding and sexism lurks in many of these assessments. It then turns to what is now known about women in the eighteenth century European freemasonry with the proviso that there is still a great deal that we do not know about women’s involvement in the lodges. Perhaps only for France do we have a fairly detailed picture of where the lodges of adoption could be found and the nature of their membership.

Author Biography

  • Margaret C. Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles

    Margaret Jacob is a distinguished professor at the history department of UCLA (California). She is the author of The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, London & Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1981, (rpt 2003); Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth Century Europe, 1991, Oxford University Press; The Origins of Freemasonry. Facts and Fictions, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005 and several articles.

References

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Archives générales, Brussels, MS 1105 A 124.

Bibliothèque Arsenal, MS 11556 f. 347. The spy d’Advenel writing on February 5, 1746.

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Bibliotheque Nationale. FM 2 3°9, 24 June 1782. Bibliotheque Nationale Fr 15176, ff. 17–18, 25–26, 29.

The Grand Lodge of the Netherlands, Kloss MSS, 190 E 47.

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Published

2014-12-30

How to Cite

Jacob, M. C. (2014). Women’s Freemasonry in the Age of Enlightenment: Stereotypes on the Right and the Left. Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, 4(1-2), 11–23. https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.v4i1.11